We are witnessing a war on humanity. This might sound hyperbolic to some, but it should not. What is unfolding across the globe is not a series of isolated events or crises. It is a coordinated assault waged through brute force against the international systems that sustain humanity. The goal is a world order that doesn’t just quietly practise “might makes right” but proudly proclaims it.
Yet we cannot understand this moment without understanding that Palestine – as both a place and a struggle – has emerged as the epicentre of it.
While the October ceasefire in Gaza offered some relief from the daily carpet bombing, shelling, drone strikes and targeted sniper fire, deadly violence continues to rain on Palestinians from the sky. In violation of the agreement, the Israeli regime also continues to severely restrict the entry of aid and food into the strip.
The Israeli army has divided Gaza in half with the so-called Yellow Line running from north to south and carving out more than 50 percent of Gaza’s pre-genocide territory. Supposedly temporary, this line in reality functions as a mechanism of permanent demographic reorganisation.
This daily violence is not incidental to the post-ceasefire arrangement – it is structural to it. We, therefore, need to be precise about what this arrangement is. It is a new phase of the genocide – one that allows the Israeli regime to pivot while enabling third states to claim progress when the core reality for Palestinians in Gaza remains largely unchanged.
Without a doubt, this moment is the apex of the Israeli regime’s plan to bring into being “Greater Israel” – a biblical project that would see Israel expand to Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and parts of Saudi Arabia.
The destruction of Gaza, the annexing of large swaths of the West Bank, the invasion of southern Lebanon and now the bombing of Iran all pave the way for the actualisation of that plan. With few consequences and little pushback despite the flagrant trampling of international law, the Israeli regime now realises it has more freedom than it could have possibly ever imagined to act however it wants and take whatever it wants.
None of this, however, can be understood in isolation from what has made it possible – nearly eight decades of unprecedented diplomatic, financial and military cover for the Israeli regime from the United States and European states. This refusal to hold Israel to account continues even as the Israeli government lays waste to the facade of the global rules-based order.
One of the starkest iterations of this dynamic came in November when the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 2803, endorsing US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza, including the creation of the Board of Peace.
This resolution was pushed through with extraordinary levels of political pressure and coercion. It mandates foreign administrative control over the Palestinian population in Gaza with no reference to the genocide or war crimes nor accountability mechanisms. It is, in effect, a resolution that launders impunity through the mechanisms of multilateralism.
Since then, the Trump administration has made it clear that it intends for the Board of Peace to be a global project – one that attempts to displace the UN and replace multilateral governance with a structure answerable solely to Washington. Clearly for Trump, Gaza is where this project will begin but it is not where it will end.
We have already seen it spread: the illegal attack on Venezuela’s sovereignty and the kidnapping of its president; the intensification of the siege on Cuba and its deliberate starvation; the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran, which is still given diplomatic cover by many Western states; Israel’s assault on Lebanon, aimed at reoccupying parts of its territory.
Simultaneously, we are also seeing the rise of artificial intelligence companies that have been implicated in the genocide in Gaza and whose technology is now deployed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency on the streets of US cities. We are seeing the private security sector, the surveillance industry and the military-industrial complex – whose profits peaked during the genocide and are repeaking now during the war on Iran – all expanding through conflict and all finding new markets, new laboratories and new populations to test on.
This is a profound moment, not just for the region, but also for the rest of the world. Trump’s comments about Spain after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s refusal to allow the US to use its military bases to conduct strikes on Iran demonstrate this par excellence. He said: “Spain actually said we can’t use their bases. And that’s all all right. We could use their base if we want. We could just fly in and use it.” This shouldn’t be dismissed as Trumpian ramblings. It should be a warning to all sovereign nations.
Capitulation or appeasement manifested in agreements to grant access to ports and airspace and defence cooperation treaties won’t shield sovereign nations from danger – in fact, quite the contrary. Such entanglements bind them to the war-making machinery of the US and Israel, rendering sovereignty conditional. It is a pattern many countries know too well.
What is now clear is that what started in Gaza is continuing elsewhere in the world. The genocidal US-Israeli war machine is expanding, and by doing so, it is waging war on humanity itself.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.